One and the Same (2 page)

I interviewed the debonair Barber twins, football stars Tiki and Ronde, who exemplify twin symbiosis, and former
Baywatch
regular Alexandra Paul, who grew up competing athletically with her identical twin, Caroline, who ultimately became a firefighter.

I spoke to virtually all the twins thrown in my path, embracing the “I know a twin” approach. If someone heard I was writing a book on the subject and proffered a pair, I usually interviewed them, on the grounds that every set would shed some light. If they were willing to excavate their personal twin psyche, it would tell me something about twinship. It would help explain my own experience to me. It would answer the widespread curiosity—and prevailing fantasies—about growing up with a doppelganger. It would instruct the countless new parents of twins about what to avoid or aspire to when raising their pairs—or at least offer an insight into how “the twin thing” (as many of us call it) plays out over a lifetime.

I wanted, above all, to explore identity: how it's forged or hamstrung in the face of doubleness; how you go about finding singularity when you are both unique and alike, your own person and someone's other half. I believed before I started—and now that I'm finished, I
believe it even more strongly—that twins put into high relief
the
central challenge for all of us: self-definition. How do we each plant our stake in the ground, decide how sensitive, callous, ambitious, conciliatory, or cautious we want to be every day? Do we even
get
to decide those traits? Are we actually at the mercy of our genetic predispositions to be combative, shy, addictive, antsy, or intelligent? Twins come with a built-in constant comparison, but defining oneself against one's twin is just an amped-up version of every person's lifelong challenge: to individuate—to create a distinctive persona in the world.

In addition to meeting twins, I also sought out “the experts”—the eclectic roster of psychologists, geneticists, obstetricians, behavioralists, social workers, artists, and philosophers who make twins their life's work. They include the ponytailed obstetrician who, with his brother—an army veteran—created the first Center for the Study of Multiple Birth; the plastic surgeon who believes he started life as a twin and who takes photographs of naked identical twins to home in on their parallel anatomy; the cultural historian who wrote a five-hundred-plus-page book about copies; the lactation nurse who, after having her own IVF twins, decided to specialize in preparing parents—bluntly and bossily—for twins chaos; the fertility specialist trying to reduce the number of multiples he creates; the biologist trying to determine if homosexuality is imprinted in utero; and the woman who lost one of her twins at birth and created a national resource for grieving parents of twins.

In September 2007, I was working on my laptop when an e-mail popped up in my AOL account from Proactive Genetics, a California lab that provides DNA testing for two hundred dollars a pop. My heart leaped. “The
results,”
I whispered to myself. “The moment of truth.”

I had asked Robin, a few months before, to swab her inner cheek with a Q-tip, as I had done, and then mailed in our DNA samples so
we could finally know for sure if we were identical. People had always assumed so—most couldn't tell us apart—but there was no biological proof: Mom's obstetrician had died, his medical records were lost, and since we were a C-section birth and delivered in an emergency “Get these babies out now” situation, no one seemed to have noticed placenta differentiation (the mark of two eggs).

I thought I should know, before I started this book, my official twin status. The dirty little secret of identicals is that we all feel slightly superior to the fraternal brand.
We're
the gold standard: rarer, more identifiable, more mysterious. We happen only by accident. We are exact DNA replicas of each other—facsimiles, clones. I have always felt that my closeness to Robin is authenticated by our sameness. I didn't want it to be otherwise. And I also worried that after a lifetime of presenting ourselves as the genuine article, we'd be exposed as a fake.

“We are pleased to report to you the results of the twin zygosity test that you requested. Analysis of the DNA indicates that Abigail Sara Pogrebin and Robin Jennifer Pogrebin are monozygotic, or more commonly referred to as identical twins.”

Staring at my computer, tears filled my eyes. How ridiculous. To be moved by an answer you already knew. Yet I was. Something about seeing our two full names there side by side—as they appeared on our birth certificates, the two Pogrebin babies, born on May 17, 1965, in a dead heat, one minute apart: 6:
18 P.M
. (me), 6:
19 P.M
. (Robin)—reminded me of what a run we've had side by side. After four decades, it was nice to have our intimacy confirmed. What a relief, I thought. We're the same. I didn't want to be
sort of
the same; I wanted to be fully the same. Because it represented a communion I'd already claimed and boasted of. Because it was how we'd been perceived. Because I didn't want our connection to be just emotional; I wanted it to be factual. Psychology professor (and fraternal twin) Dr. Nancy Segal states plainly in her book,
Entwined Lives
, what all of us identical twins already know: We're more connected. “Fraternal twins are not as close, nor are their lives as intimately entwined.”

• •

Whom is this book for? Anyone who is a twin, has a twin, might have twins, married a twin, knows a twin, or is simply curious to get deep inside this extreme intimacy. It's for anyone who wants to understand why twins serve as scientists' ultimate petri dish, why twins' infancy can be so uniquely demanding, why their quest for individuality can be thwarted by the person closest to them. It's for anyone—all of us—trying to hammer out a separate, clear sense of self.

I think I started this book to get inside my own twinship. Or maybe to get outside of it—to approach it as a reporter, trying to untangle all the intricacies of being born two. I spoke to twins who cherish each other, resent each other, advise, prod, and protect each other; I spoke to parents who wanted twins, fertility doctors who make them, obstetricians who birth them, artists who photograph or are inspired by them, psychiatrists who study and counsel them, scientists who deconstruct them, coaches who prepare for them.

What did I come away with? Confirmation that twins, despite their recent ubiquity, still fascinate and confound. Evidence that twins will always play a key role in decoding what differentiates all of us—emotionally, temperamentally, and physically.

I envied some pairs and judged others. I met twins who had let go of each other, others who hold on, twins who exult in their twinship, others who wouldn't wish it on their own children. Along the way, I listened for the recipe for healthy twinship—to guide not just me but also the countless parents now raising two. Why do some twins end up feeling confined by doubleness, while others wear it like a medal? How does one start as a set and end up successfully single? Not just single meaning solo but single meaning singular: differentiated, distinct, particular, confident in one's separateness. How had Robin and I each become One when we started out as the Same?